My Server was just down for an Upgrade.

This old computer from 2008 may be running the most powerful Linux version at my disposal, in 64-bit mode, and its dual-core CPU may clock up to 2.6GHz, but until now, it had still only possessed 2GB of RAM! This box still uses DDR2 RAM modules, and I had upgraded it from 2x 512MB to 2x 1GB in the year 2008. But what I needed to do today, was to upgrade it to 2x 2GB, finally giving it its maximum of 4GB of RAM.

This time around, I no longer felt I’d have the dexterity to prevent static damage to the RAM modules, just by controlling the sequence with which I touched parts. And so this time, I also felt I needed to use an actual anti-static bracelet.

Further, the CPU heat sink was plugged full of dust, so that the CPU fan was no longer able to push any cooling air through it. I knew for a long time that this also needed to be remedied, but had procrastinated in doing so. While I had the tower open today, I also took care of the dust in the CPU heat sink, with a bottle of compressed gas.

One reason I was not so eager to do this much-needed work, was the knowledge that if I had botched this, I’d have lost my one and only server. But I was also reminded, that if the server was to fail, because the CPU was consistently running too hot, the outage would take longer than 1 hour to fix. And so I finally chose the 1 hour preventative action.

I am glad that now the CPU is being cooled properly again, and that I finally have 4GB of RAM on this 64-bit machine.

Also, this was one situation in which I could not post a Maintenance Mode Notice on my blog, because for 1 hour, there was no server to render the Maintenance message screen.